Pariah (41 page)

“Maybe so, but this is all I can think of. It worked for Abe. How many times did Abe suggest one of us
young bucks—
” Alan
made air-quotes “—do this? Dozens. ‘If an old fart like me could do it, what’s your excuse?’ ”

“It worked for Abe because he did it
before
things got so bad out there. There were countless morsels besides him for the ghouls to eat. They didn’t
need
to pick a well-insulated geezer.”

“I suppose.” Alan knew she was right.

“You recall anyone else trying this ploy and succeeding?” she added.

Alan couldn’t because no one had. Back in April that Venezuelan from 2B had been shamed enough by Abe to make an attempt and was devoured in plain sight within yards of the building. But he hadn’t donned Abe’s gear, assuming enough of his own would suffice. It hadn’t. Alan pulled the boxes out and ripped them open. Inside were Abe’s improvised armor: the
Baby Sof’ Suit
^®
infant winter onesies and the XXXL pair of
Bender’s Breathable Sub-zero Shield
^®
Sooper-System
^™
Weather Bibs
. Leaving the bib down—as Abe has described in detail many times in the prior months—Alan began stuffing onesies down the pants, padding himself from the ankles up. When he’d reached maximum density he pulled up the bib, heaved on the matching camouflage parka, and stuffed in more onesies. With the hood of the giant parka cinched tight around a scarf and wearing a pair of snow goggles, Alan resembled a camouflaged Michelin Man.

“So,” Ellen said, a hint of worried derision in her tone, “how are you going to get upstairs now, Stay Puft?”

Alan cursed under his breath. He should have suited up in the apartment. Already he was self-basting in perspiration. With his gloved hands he gripped the railings and hauled himself up the narrow flights of stairs to 2B. By the time he reached the window with the rappelling line he was soaked with sweat.

“I think we really had a moment, there,” Ellen said.

“I know we did.”

“I think we really have something, period,” Ellen said.

“I think so, too.”

“I shouldn’t have ever busted your hump about Mona. I know you were loyal. I guess I just needed some drama to pass the time.”

Alan laughed, not with disdain. With affection.

“I deserve your mocking,” Ellen said.

“Don’t be such a drama queen,” Alan said. Shifting the scarf and balaclava and goggles he smiled at Ellen and she could see the affection, which made this so much worse.

“Can’t you wait another day? Maybe they’re all okay.”

“Ellen,” Alan said.

“Just one more day. One.”

He touched her face with the thick glove, then removed it to touch
her
skin to skin. Ellen kissed his hand, which was slick with sweat.

“This may be the last I get to taste you,” she said, now tearing up.

“No, it won’t. In the words of that great statesman, the Governator, ‘
Ah’ll be bock
.’ ”

Ellen semi-smiled, her face scrunched up, trying to hold back the tsunami of emotion.

“Okay then,” Alan said, refitting the scarf, balaclava and goggles, then gloves.

With the grace of Paul Prudhomme, he positioned himself on the windowsill—he was barely able to fit through the opening—swung his legs out, gripped the rope and lowered himself onto Dabney’s van. The zombies noticed the motion but didn’t seem overly riled. Ellen’s heart jackhammered her innards. Her ribs ached. Her eyes felt in danger of escaping their sockets, so focused were they on Alan and the horde below. She couldn’t watch. She couldn’t
not
watch. With a faint wave, Alan sat on the van’s roof, lowered himself to the ground and disappeared from view.

Several excruciating minutes passed and then Ellen spotted Alan’s bloated form bobbing up York toward Eighty-sixth Street. Though the zombies didn’t make way, they didn’t attack, either.

When she exhaled, it felt like the first time in her life.

It was more than weird to be out among the undead.

Though he couldn’t be certain, Alan felt as though in spite of the temperature and copious garments, he’d stopped sweating altogether. It was unlikely, but he felt a permeating chill. To combat fear he kept his thoughts clinical. He’d absorb the detail he couldn’t see from his window for future studies in watercolor and oils. Their skin was matte, but with oily patches, the pigment bleached or discolored. The white zombies were pasty yellow, the black ones gray and ashy. Even the matter underneath their shredded derma, the fasciae, peeled to reveal brown muscle tissue and dry bone. Everything looked desiccated.
What you guys need is a good moisturizer
, Alan thought.
Some Oil of Olay or some Neutrogena. Something with a high SPF rating. I mean, look at you guys
.

He focused on the path ahead. The bookstore was two and a half avenues west. Even at a snail’s pace, without realizing it, he’d already made it to First Avenue uneaten. That was good. That was very good. Were he a man of faith he’d think it miraculous.

Since the zombies hadn’t made an opening for him he was rubbing elbows with them—even the elbowless. Though there was generous padding between him and them, each contact mainlined straight to his nerve endings.
Focus
, he thought.
Focus
. He recalled self-help gurus like Tony Robbins, with their “can do” attitude and their mind-over-matter mantras. Alan had always taken those guys to be con men, though, so conjuring them didn’t help. And really, didn’t their shticks always boil down to creating wealth?
Not helping. Not fucking helping.

Condensation accrued on his glasses and interior of the goggles, the top portion of his view becoming erased by fog.
Great. Soon I’ll be blind. Mr. Magoo on a rescue mission. That’s genius
. Something shoved Alan from behind, propelling him forward a few paces too quickly. His face contorted under its wrappings, his lips compressed between his jaws, half swallowed to stifle the shriek lodged in his throat, eyes shut, preparing for the worst. He collided with several zombies, but they responded only by growling and lightly shoving back.
Am I immune?
Alan wondered.
All this time, maybe I could’ve gone out. Maybe I don’t even need all this gear. Yeah? Don’t get cocky,
his brain chided.
Good idea, brain.

The slog west was interminable. What struck Alan as odd was that down among them they didn’t smell bad at all. Maybe it was all the wadding around his nose and mouth, but they seemed virtually odorless. Did the stink rise? Were they losing their scent or was he merely desensitized? They were ghastly to behold, though, and being in their midst hammered home the improbability of their existence. How did they persist? Some were barely more than skin tarpaulins encasing collapsed innards and strings of sinew. Movement would brush his undercarriage and he’d look down only to see some half-, third- or quarter-zombie inching along the pavement like a semipulverized worm. The most natural bit of genetic programming was the survival instinct, but this was so beyond that.

The crowd seemed to swell as Alan pushed onward, the space between him and them closing, closing, closing. The material of the hunting parka, the uncounted layers of baby snowsuits, all of it, felt inadequate. The undead’s emaciated frames, their pointy shoulders—some ending there, armless—their angular hipbones, all of it scraped against the plasticized shell of his outerwear, injecting amplified echoes directly into his ear canals. His pulse thudded in his temples and he could hear his heart laboring. He fought the urge
to scream. To laugh. To cough. He wanted to choke. Bile rose in his throat several times and he swallowed it back.
How can they not smell me? I must reek of fear. Any second I might shit myself. Does shit sound the dinner gong? Do they still crap?
Though many people did so at the moment of death, defecating seemed likely to be solely the province of the living. But these things ate living human flesh. After it went down did it just sit in their stomachs or did they expel it? Seeing them in the flesh, it was hard for Alan to imagine them digesting. They were so withered, almost mummified. Did the ones missing their gastrointestinal tract still feel the need to feed? Did they absorb nutrients? So many questions.

Alan felt like the zombie equivalent of Dian Fossey, a scientist studying a contrastive species . . . only dumber.

He looked down at the pavement to check for zombie scat.

Am I insane? I must be. What sane person would be out here in the first place?
The padding he wore began to feel like a giant sweat diaper, because Alan felt it must be spraying off him. He stood motionless, pondering his predicament and his grip on it. His eyes focused not on what was happening beyond the the twin layer of fogged lenses, but retreated within, his focal depth confined to his own eyeballs. Things moved there: floaters. He watched the transparent blobs swim in the vitreous humor between the lens and retina.

A fly alit on his goggles, its unexpected appearance making Alan flinch. His spasm attracted some unwelcome glances and the odd hiss.
Oh shit. Don’t let me get killed by a fucking fly.
The insect remained on the lens, grooming or whatever it was they did when they fussed with their forelegs. Seeing was growing more difficult as the condensation crept further down the lenses. Alan’s eyes darted back and forth, making contact with dead eyes in the mob. It struck Alan that he’d portrayed something inaccurately in his zombie portraits: he’d made their eyes symmetrical, forward facing, their vision binocular. Up close he could see that in almost all of them—the
ones who still
had
eyes—their peepers pointed in different directions, one aimed straight out, the other rolled to the side or pointed inward at the nose. Some rolled back into the socket. All glazed with death, grayed and fogged and yellowed. Flies and larvae crawled in and out of the zombies’ various orifices, their hosts organic mobile homes.

Alan’s head ached.

Maybe there was a word for what his stomach was experiencing, but probably not one in English. Maybe German. And thirty letters long.

Something gripped Alan’s ankle and panic bypassed his leg and deposited itself directly in his colon. He looked down and through the miasma saw a legless zombie with only one arm hitching a ride, its clawlike, almost fleshless hand digging splintered nails into the thick fabric of Alan’s hunting overalls.
Oh fuck. Oh Jesus
. Alan didn’t dare attempt to shake it off for fear betraying his humanity—his edibility.
Maybe if I start moving again it’ll go away
. Step after mired step the freeloader was dragged until Alan found himself stuck, unable to impel that leg forward. He looked down again, straining his eyes to fathom the hindrance. Another zombie had trodden on Alan’s passenger. Alan tried to disengage his leg from the bony hand. Nothing doing. In death—or would that be
unlife
—was rigor mortis the status quo? Until his hitchhiker’s hitchhiker stepped off, Alan was anchored to this spot.

Alan wished he wasn’t an atheist.

The other zombie stumbled off the back of Alan’s passenger and he moved forward, wondering how long the calf-gripping parasite would hold on.

Situated in a large apartment building, the Barnes & Noble was midway between Second and Third. It struck Alan, as he waded through the crowd, that zombies didn’t really walk. The ones that could stood upright, sort of, but they just kind of shuffled around
aimlessly, their movement dictated by the group rather than the individual. They were like plants impelled to move by a breeze. The only time he saw them propel themselves with purpose was when it was feeding time.
But I’m moving with purpose. Maybe because I’m moving so slowly
. It had to be scent. Were there scientists anywhere working on answers? Some underground bunker somewhere? If so, was that even a comforting thought?

As he cleared the southwest corner of Second Avenue, Alan felt his passenger again snag on something; this time the sensation was accompanied by the sound of fabric tearing. Alan looked down and saw the culprit, scarcely visible through the haze: not his zombie hanger-on, but a rusty detached bumper. His guest’s detached hand, however, was still hooked onto Alan’s pants leg, the rest of the zombie lost in the profusion of spindly legs. Then Alan noticed a splotch of something pale and pinkish.
Paint? Chalk?
His own pale skin exposed in the perforation.
Fuck
. The bumper had torn it, too. He transfixed on a small blossom of red dripping down his calf.

The adjacent zombies’ postures stiffened a fraction, as did Alan’s.

Inches away, one zombie canted its head at an angle that telegraphed its intent: to begin the beguine.
Fuck that
. Faster than Alan would have thought possible the zombie lunged and snapped at him, burying its teeth in the outer layer of the parka, near the shoulder. The padding was thinnest there and Alan felt a pinch. Not skin breaking, but piss inducing. Alan punched his attacker hard and it fell away, leaving behind a couple of teeth.

Nonetheless, the word was out:
dinner is served.

Scent.

Violent motion.

The zombie’s associates heaved toward Alan, their need raw, guileless. Alan swatted at them, punching and shouldering. They were weak but plentiful. He was practically blind, but his goal was
within yards. More teeth and limbs bit, pawed, and clawed at Alan. He heard more material tearing. One arm penetrated the outer parka shell and he felt it groping at the bib of his overall. If he started hemorrhaging
Baby Sof’ Suit
^®
infant winter onesies he’d soon graduate to plain old hemorrhaging. The image of his own entrails boiling out filled his forebrain.
No, no, no!
He twisted side to side and the perpetrator’s arm snapped off with a sickening pop, still twitching within Alan’s coat, its bony digits grazing his right nipple, which stiffened inappropriately.
Oh god, oh god, I’m being felt up by a severed arm!